Pu Zhiqiang: China’s Selective Memory

We Chinese are outraged by Japan’s World War II crimes – the forcing of Chinese into sexual slavery as “comfort women,” the 1937 massacre of unarmed civilians in Nanking, and the experiments in biological warfare. Our indignation redoubles when the Japanese distort or paper over this record in their museums and their textbooks. But if we look honestly at ourselves – at the massacres and invasions strewn through Chinese history, or just at the suppression of protesters in recent times – and if we compare the behavior of the Japanese military with that of our own soldiers, there is not much to distinguish China from Japan.